Beschreibung:

CHANDLER, Raymond (1888-1959). Typed letter signed ("Raymond Chandler") to William Gault, writer of mystery and genre fiction, La Jolla, California, 8 March 1956. 1 page, 4to, single-spaced, Chandler's address imprinted at top, a little wrinkled, a slight marginal tear. "I NEVER HEARD OF A COMIC STRIP CHARACTER CALLED HEMINGWAY." A very good, chatty letter, discussing several detective literature writers: "A man named Fox had the impudence to suggest that I deliberately designed my signature to be unintelligible...I got that way from being a nervous wreck and I got to be a nervous wreck from signing checks. I never heard of a comic strip character called Hemingway, possibly because I never look at comic strips...So it was the other Hemingway. Surely you would be very wrong to allow yourself to be made ever into a new Brett Halliday [author of the Michael Shayne mystery books]...As for Fred Brown if this is Frederic Brown [Amerian mystery novelist], and he is a high-brow, why does he write this faux naif style? He does it better than [Erle Stanley] Gardner's A.A. Fair [a Gardner pseudonym] but it's natural to Gardner who is a very able man but definitely not a highbrow. I don't remember autographing a book for Craig Rice [pseudonym of the mystery writer Georgiana Ann Randolph] but I was at her house once...and I probably did it there. I don't know her well enough to know why she went to hell but she is the only mystery writer who ever got on the cover of Time , isn't she?...Gardner always hints at vast stores of secret information which for some recondite reason may not be disclosed..."